AGEN, France — Prosecutors sought Friday three months in jail for a 32-year-old man who dragged French president Nicolas Sarkozy off his feet Thursday as he greeted the public on a walkabout.

Hermann Fuster, 32, was in court in the southwestern town of Agen a day after he yanked Sarkozy by his jacket in a surprise breach of security that left the president unharmed.

State prosecutor Pascal Prache asked judges for a nine-month jail term, six months suspended, and community service for Fuster, a caretaker and receptionist at a local conservatory.

“You breached a taboo by attacking the president of the republic,” Prache told Fuster in a packed courtroom. “Democracy is based on respect and the absence of physical violence. It is a democratic principal that you endangered.”